Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive, or be he dead
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread

Not today you don’t!

Vintage traveled to the Kael Drakkal Arena tonight to visit our old friend Derakor the Vindicator, a giant many of us have been longing to defeat since joining the server, if for nothing else, the pure nostalgic bliss it brings us seeing him fall. In our first attempt, we agro’d him with one of his guards, as the 33 of our fearless raiders worked perfectly in sync to kill the guard while CH chaining the MT on Vindi. After the guard fell all that was left was the main event. But alas, our first attempt had a hiccup and we ended up falling to him with 50% to go.

Attempt 2, lock and loaded and ready to attempt Vindi again without any adds, we refined our strategy and positioning, and lured him in with young gnomes as bait. He chased after them like school girls while our ogres smacked him around and we engaged. After an epic battle, we were wiped once more with 3% to go… A rant of what if’s were discussed and we all had the thirst for this kill tonight.

In our final attempt of the night, we focused our heals, timed our spells, and gave it everything we had. We easily overran poor Derakor with barely any losses and crossed off this fabled legend from our progression checklist. Feeling mischievous, we then worked on pulling the Statue of Rallos Zek, however that will be a story for another day… tune in for more progressive adventures of Vintage in Kael Drakkal. Thanks for the fun night everybody, we are kicking giant ass in Velious so far!

In our first three weeks, Vintage has slain Lodizal, Lord Doljonijiarnimorinar, Kelorek Dar, Velketor the Sorcerer, Zlandicar, Wuoshi, and completed a Blessed Coldain Prayer Shawl. Every member has also been improving their Claws of Veeshan faction, allowing us to farm Halls of Testing for Skyshrine Armor. Check out all of our photos in our Velious Photo Gallery.

Initial Velious Guild Goals and Rules

Our leadership team has been planning for Velious for a few months now and now that it’s finally here, we wanted to share what we’ve discussed. There will be a few changes to our structure and rules, and a road map on how we will be progressing through this expansion. We’ve designed this roadmap based on the needs of our particular guild and based on the members we have, so keep in mind, factors such as our raiding capabilities and gear and personnel were all considered. Please feel free to provide your feedback on anything stated below:

1. New Raid Leader / Raid Assistant Structure

I’ve promoted Number to our leadership team as a Raid Leader in Velious. Number used to be our guild leader on the Sleeper progression server, and has also lead guilds that Wejbot and I played with on Rodcet Nife long long ago. Now that we are in Velious, Number will be a more active raider and stepping up to help us be more successful in the upcoming months to come. I will still be helping on raids as the Raid Assistant, organizing and planning, while our new RL/RA structure will help me delegate tasks to someone else who will be able to execute more effectively without many boxes to worry about.

Shuvit and Monkus have also proven to be good raid leaders, and will be Raid Leaders along with Number.

We tested this new RL/RA structure in our last VP run, and it not only made my job a lot easier during the raid, but communication coming from one person in both vintage-info and guildchat was much improved. We’ll continue to try and get better at our communication during raids so we can be more efficient and deadly.

1a. New Class Leaders Positions

As part of our raid structure changes, we’re going to be implementing more usage of channels for specific roles. It is our intention to have members filter these channels into windows that are readily visible so they do not miss instructions or communication with each other as tactics during fights will usually depend on this. Since every raid will basically have a different strategy for every class, the class leaders will be in charge of knowing and communicating their group’s role and responsibilities from the RL and officers down to every member. For example, mob positioning, off tanking, main tank switching, complete heals and patch healing, and caster notifications to nuke or run to hide between AOE waves.

Tanks/Melee: Number/Shuvit, Open
Healers: Wejbot, Open
Caster DPS: Open

One of the biggest changes to our raiding strategies is we will be using CH Rotations for almost every Velious raid. The easiest mobs to practice this on will be Dracolich and Cazic Thule since the zone will be cleared making CR’s very painless. Other mobs will be used for CH practices to mix it up, such as Lord Yelinak once we are all on CoV faction, but count on these two being primarily what we see first.

The next change will be the DPS class leader will have the responsibility of dictating when wizards should nuke. Rather than wizards nuking their eyes out, which may steal agro from MT’s, a designated person will hotkey when wizards should cast and when to rest. They will also be responsible for telling DPS when to run in to nuke between an AOE wave and when to run away and hide. Other responsibilities similar to those will follow as we come across them.

2. Gearing up the Guild

There is a lot of gear upgrades that we need as a guild before we can start raiding all the targets of Velious. Kunark’s raid mobs had a max hp of 32k, however in Velious all mobs have a lot more HP, meaning tanks and clerics will need to be sustainable for long fights, casters need more mana, and everyone needs better resists/hp/ac/weapons. Gearing up the guild will be our initial priority. It will make all future raids easier for us and we will waste less time trying to fight things we cannot yet handle. We should already know how important gear is for our members, especially with as many boxers we have and the numbers we bring to raids is usually less than what the content was made for on PC.

The armor we will be upgrading to will be farmed from Halls of Testing. In order to farm Halls of Testing, we will need EVERYBODY to faction in Kael Arena for Claws of Veeshan faction. Factioning is our #1 goal, followed by armor farming in Halls of Testing.

2a. Velious Gear only acquired through Vintage Raids

Our current rule is to only allow raid armor that is obtained through our own guild’s raids. Officers are currently discussing if there will be any exceptions to this rule for current and new members, and if there will be, there will definitely still be an unlocking of items and VKP charge involved. More to come soon.

2b. New Velium Jewelery

We’ve been stocking up on Blue Diamonds and Diamonds for months now in preparation for new Velium Diamond Rings and Velium Blue Diamond Bracelets. These are 100% provided by guild funds so we’d appreciate it if everybody who receives rings and bracelets to return their old Platinum Diamond Rings, and if you choose to, we’ll gladly accept any PP or gems to this expensive upgrade. Each Bracelet is +30 Mana, +9SV All, +11 SV Magic, the Rings are +8SV All, giving every raider a total of +60 Mana, +20SV All, and +24SV Magic.

3. Raid Targets

Our initial factions will be Dwarf and CoV. Based on this requirement, our first few months of targets will be (until we are done with CoV faction) is:

- Armor Farm Halls of Testing
- Halls of Testing – Drakes and Dozekar
- Cazic Thule (in Fear, not Zone), Draco, Golems
- King Tormax
- Derakor the Vindicator
- Statue of Rallos Zek
- Orb of Infinite Void (need a giant-faction COH Mage..)
- Dain Frostreaver IV
- Velketor the Sorceror

That’s pretty much all you can do if we don’t kill dragons. Once we are all ally-CoV faction, we can kill a dragon every now and then, i.e. when no giants are up; We will just have to regrind our faction between raids.

After a few months of farming armor in HoT we’ll break off our Dragon faction and start killing everything in the expansion, such as the first broods and West Wing dragons for in-between gear and ST keys. If the guild is overall equipped to handle harder dragons, our next step would be Lord Yelinak, KT, Sonta and NTOV.

In the meantime, there are a lot of things to keep everyone busy on non raid days such as: farming gems, keeping factions, tradeskills for shawl/ring, and other Velious quests (Eyepatch of Plunder, etc.). The way we will be handling gems + armor will be announced soon as well.

Guild Raiding Overview:

Phase 1: Factioning & HoT Armor, Farm Gems, Tradeskills, Quests
Phase 2: Non CoV-ruining raid targets listed above
Phase 3: West Wing Dragons, First Broods, ST Keys
Phase 4: Lord Yelinak, KT, Sonta, NTOV

We’re still currently recruiting members of all levels interested in the Progression experience in the Velious era. Please visit our Recruiting Page and our Guild Charter for more information. You can also visit our IRC Chat Room and Forums to ask our members any questions you may have about Vintage as we begin this new expansion!

Waiting at the docks for Icebreaker

Impressed at the magnificence of the gnomish construction

Awaiting new adventures in the Iceclad Ocean

Thurgadin, Our New Home

Vintage and fellow residents of Al’Kabor, join us on Sunday, March 6 2011 as Vintage lands on the shores of the Iceclad Ocean to celebrate our leap in progression. Enjoy the fruits of our labor with a video of our accomplishments and highlights of our transition from Kunark to the new expansion, filmed and edited by Dimitre. Enjoy!

It’s official!! Our progression guild is finally relocating to the frozen continent this weekend! Our gnomes have farmed fur robes and wolf hide mittens so they can look as cute as buttons, and our ogres have just been eating… A LOT… like fat bears preparing to hibernate when we arrive in the wintry tundras. We have long persevered through the jungles and deserts of Kunark, since we first set foot upon this foreign soil in April of 2010. Our dedication and steadfast resolve has lead us to this moment, the opening of the next expansion: The Scars of Velious. We have braved the depths of Sebillis, conquered the dragons within valleys and molten hillsides, plunged deep into Chokdai labyrinths, completing dozens of epics, including one of each class, and completed all the nostalgic raids including Trakanon, Venril Sathir, Plane of Sky, Faydedwer, and more…

We ended our Kunark era by completing over 56 quested VP Keys, and raided the infamous dragons of Veeshan’s Peak for the past two straight months. With the completion and clearing of Veeshan’s Peak, Vintage has defeated some of the most challenging content only few guilds have succeeded before them using era appropriate gear and spells. This feat in and of itself is worthy of commendation to each and every member of the guild. Beyond that, we have proven that we are not only ready for the next set of challenges, but that we will stare them down and defeat them with the same courage and ferocity as we did with Kunark.

It’s been quite the roller coaster ride, a lot of hard work, months of farming resist gear and levels, lots of trials, wipes, and mistakes, but in the end, we’re all very fulfilled and satisfied with our growth as a guild and experiences we’ve had together. Vintage is very excited to the new challenges that will await us in Velious and we look forward to joining the rest of Al’Kabor in this awesome expansion.